Give Me a Break

Remark By Webb Arouses Passions:

Okay, a little background if you haven't heard the story. At a White House reception for the newly elected members of Congress last week, Preznit George Dubbya Bush walked up to Senator-elect Jim Webb and asked "So, Jim, how's your boy?"

Now, if I, like Webb, had a son serving in Iraq, a number of retorts would have come to my mind, such as:

"In the goddamn quagmire you stuck him in, you arrogant ass."

Or:

"Unlike your worthless drunken hell-spawn, volunteering to serve his country".

You get the idea.

But Webb was politer than I would have been. "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," he answered.

Bush decided he was going to push a little harder:"That's not what I asked you," he said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb responded.

From the reaction of the Washington chattering class, you'd have though Webb had spat in the face of the Dimwit-in-Chief.

George Will was the first to get all prissy: "Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb's more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being -- one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another."

Well, boo-fucking-hoo. God forbid that anyone should engage in "calculated rudeness" to a man who'd said, in so many words, that if you vote for people like James Webb, terrorists win.

Then Virginia Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell chimed in: 'I understand having a child over in harm's way in Iraq. You take the situation over there much more personally,' McDonnell said. 'The problem for Mr. Webb is he's got to learn a little bit better about having a sense of decorum. To be an effective U.S. senator, you have to deal in a collegial manner.'"

As the kids on the Internets say, O RLY? Is this the same collegiality Vice President Dick Cheney showed when he told Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy to fuck himself?

I've got news for you, Mr. Will and Mr. McDonnell: civility flows both ways. After six years of being called traitors and terrorist sympathizers, I hope you'll understand if some of us don't get the fucking vapors because a newly elected Senator who was accused by Republicans of writing child pornography doesn't bow down and kiss Bush's ring.

Frankly, it's about the time someone gave the Boy in the Bubble a little reality check. The problem with this so-called "civility" is that sociopaths like the current crew in the White House manipulate it so you'll give them a pass on their rotten behavior. They count on you not making a fuss.

Well, news flash. Fusses are about to be made.

Does. Not. Compute.

The U.S. government agreed yesterday to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by an Oregon lawyer who was arrested and jailed for two weeks in 2004 after the FBI bungled a fingerprint match and mistakenly linked him to a terrorist attack in Spain.

Under the terms of the settlement filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Portland, the government also issued an unusual apology to Brandon Mayfield for the "suffering" caused by his wrongful arrest and imprisonment. It acknowledged that the ordeal was "deeply upsetting" to Mayfield and his family.

Mayfield will be able to continue pursuing his legal challenge to the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law, which was used to obtain his personal records while he was under investigation.

The payment is a clear embarrassment for the FBI, which arrested Mayfield as a material witness in May 2004. FBI examiners had erroneously linked him to a partial fingerprint on a bag of detonators found after terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid in March, killing 191 people. The bureau compounded its error by stridently resisting the conclusions of the Spanish National Police, which notified the FBI three weeks before Mayfield was arrested that the fingerprint did not belong to him.

Now wait a minute. All people arrested as terrorists are guilty, right? They have to be. That's why we can torture them to get them to confess to being terrorists. I mean, if not every person detained for terrorism is really a terrorist, then we might accidentally torture an innocent person...and worse, an innocent person might confess to get them to stop hurting him.

So Mayfield must have been guilty, because he was arrested.

But if the FBI paid him this settlement, then the FBI made a mistake. But the anti-terrorist agents of the FBI can't make a mistake because if they make mistakes...then..innocent people......might...


*HEAD EXPLODES*

Kick-Ass Chick of the Day

cbs2.com: (CBS) PALM SPRINGS, Calif. A murder suspect armed with an Uzi sub-machine gun led police on a high speed car chase through Palm Springs and a foot pursuit thereafter before being detained, police said.

The pursuit ensued about 4 a.m. when a silver Pontiac Grand Am with a burned out license plate lamp tried to elude a pursuing police car on Palm Canyon Drive, according to a Palm Springs Police Department statement. The pursuit reached speeds of 70 mph.

After making a U-turn on Bogart Trail, the Pontiac sped through residential streets, 'often on the wrong side of the roadway,' according to the statement.

A flat tire forced the suspect and his accomplice to abandon the Pontiac in the 2800 block of Palm Canyon Drive and flee in opposite directions.

The pursuing officer, with one year of experience on the force, chased the driver, identified as Jason Lee Gillespie, 29, of San Diego, and grabbed him as he attempted to scale a wall. Police noted that the officer is a 5-foot-2 woman and the suspect is 6 foot 5 and weighs 235 pounds.

A backup officer arrived as the woman yanked the suspect off the wall. That was when police noticed Gillespie had an Uzi strapped to his shoulder. The suspect was disarmed and detained without a shot fired.

Heh. Absolutely bad-ass. I do loves me some tough girls.

Thanks to alert reader Stephen Blackmoore for this one.

That'll Buy a Lot of Copies of "My Pet Goat"

New York Daily News - Home - W library in record book: WASHINGTON - He may be a certified lame duck now, but President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.

Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995.

Heh. Considering not only how willfully non-literate (as opposed to illiterate) Bush is, but also his well-known penchant for secretiveness and obsession with never letting any information out, just what are they going to put in this library? Well, let's see....

The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider said.

If actual conservatives do write papers and books there, they won't be favorable to Bush. "Bush=conservative" is the biggest lie told by this Administration, and that's saying something.

So who pays for this?

Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential "mega" donors and are pressing for a formal site announcement - now expected early in the new year.

Oh boy! Maybe Syria will pony up a million or two!